Fighting Elegy

Year: 1966

Grade: B

Country: Japan

Director: Suzuki

Review

suzuki. the guy could direct movies, there’s just no way around it. here he deals, again, with rebellion. the story follows a young student as he gradually turns towards rebellion in order to impress a girl. he trains to become a fighter and joins a gang towards this end. after several scraps he finds himself in a small, foreign town which suits him even less. he rails against the establishment and eventually joins a larger rebellion in tokyo. the film has a definite sense of humor, more so than most suzuki films. there is also a repressed sexuality motif that is developed rather strongly throughout the film. it’s a visually stimulating film (as is always the case with suzuki), but in a different way. rather than playing with editing, time, color or light, he splits the screen a lot. large portions of the screen are filled by objects in the foreground or by split screen shots. maybe it’s all to indicate the fractured psyche of the youth the film follows. i don’t know. what i do know is that suzuki has a flair about his films that make them eminently watchable.